Yes, this story is about someone’s knickers. It’s also about an antidote for a large part of the fossil CO2 in the air, a major focal point of the present age?

CO2 driven chaos has polarized the world and produced armies of opposing points of view. What if the polarity and argument was so inexpensive to solve it wasn’t worth the trouble to argue about? That just might get some peoples knickers in a twist.

Tens of thousands are working on the issues of fossil CO2, it is their job. They are paid and spend countless billions. I don’t begrudge their sincere interest and dedication to their jobs and passion. But as is often the case in human endeavours, there too frequently comes a time when the reason for the work, plays second fiddle to preserving the work.

In my own case I have a peculiar dedication to this topic as I have expressed in my personal and business mantra, “Save the world, make a little money on the side.” Like all mantras these words seek to produce a magical effect.

It is of tantamount importance that the order of the mantra words remain fixed. The magic is destroyed if the phrases are reversed. Too many seem to think the reverse is the right perspective, they keep telling me “make money, save a little world on the side.”  I am sorry that’s just wrong.

The unintended consequence of our work and success apparently reflects on many whose livelihoods are truly but unintentionally threatened by the fact that this mantra seems to have delivered true magic.

In a world where hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent to try to find a means to manage billions of tonnes of CO2 emissions here’s my prescription for getting into big trouble.

Old Massett Village

This story is playing out in a native village on remote islands in the NE Pacific. Its people are Haida, often known as the Salmon people. Decades ago every village family had as many jobs as fishers as they might want. There was almost no unemployment, they led a simple life, close to nature. Then the day came when the fish were mostly gone. Here’s a link to more reading on how it only takes a village.

No matter how hard the village has worked for decades to restore the salmon spawning streams and operated salmon hatcheries.  As they sent more and more baby salmon out to sea each year, fewer and fewer adult fish came back. Something terrible was happening out on the vast ocean pasture where the salmon grew. It wasn’t that the fish were being caught as the village had long lost the fishing jobs.

I was asked to partner with this tiny native people’s village of barely 800 souls to try to bring the fish back. This is something I have worked toward for two decades. Over the course of 6 years leading up to last year, 2012, the village and I worked to prepare for what needed to be done. We must replenish and restore their ocean pasture. We must give back to nature.

Here’s a video of the press conference put on by the village about the project. This is the true story on the record but in this world it seems some believe that if you tell a lie often enough the truth will be buried by the lies.

Restored pasture from satellite showing plankton chlorophyll

Ocean pastures are just like pastures on land, if there is good grass lots of animals thrive there, if there is little grass, or in our case little plankton, few animals, few fish can survive. If we became good stewards of our ocean pasture we believed we could bring the fish back.

IT WORKED!

It worked well, beyond our wildest dreams, it worked like it was magic. From our one fishing boat we took mineral micronutrients to replenish the ocean pasture. What worked so wonderfully was simple iron ore rock dust.

The amount needed was equal to the volume of one tiny grain of salt in each cubic meter of water. The hardest part of the job was applying the rock dust so sparingly as to only deliver this infinitesimal amount spread over 10,000 sq. kilometers. No easy task. Small work that provides the results is never easy. Naturally even more work has been the extensive and intensive scientific studies of before and after.

We thought the world would welcome this incredible news. The means to manage the largest amount of our climate changing, global warming, life smothering CO2 was at hand and proven. And the cost was so cheap that big governments and massive carbon taxes would not be needed.

Instead a tiny village could do it. The miracle is that if we can assemble  just 100 villages and teach them how to be stewards of their ocean pastures, if they work to bring their fish back, if they each find just one fishing boat to work for a few months each year, it will work.

The cost of changing billions of tonnes of CO2 from its deadly form where it is killing ocean life into restored ocean life, into fish, and every other form of ocean life is going to be mere millions, not billions.

OOPS!!!!!!

Rather than this being heralded as good news for the planet a great protest has arisen. Hundreds of reports have used the propaganda rule book to smear the village work and the names of those involved. The most unflattering photos that could be found are used.

Every trick in the political, NGO, and media dirty tricks books is used. Why?

A tiny village science office with seven scientists is subjected to the largest SWAT raid in Canadian environmental history, and an unlawful raid at that!

How dare he? This is a Dr. Strangelove scenario. That guy Russ George is Greenfinger. He’s a rouge. There ought to be law against this sort of thing.

How dare those Indians bring back their fish and in doing so offer a way to save the world and only use a very very little bit of money doing so. (Note, the idiots actually called us “cowboys,” but we’ve corrected that insult, we’re Indians!)Don’t let them “save the world, and do it for so little money.”

What about the jobs of all those working on solutions that demand hundreds of billions in cost.

We’d apologize for the success but we’re only temporary occupants of this place. It belongs to our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and we promised to take care of it for them!

IT JUST WORKS!